A brief but eventful attachment to a ladies' illustrated paper, to which he contributed short stories and biography, increased Strindberg's knowledge of the exigences of journalism and the possibilities for feminine exploitation of the impecunious male. He chose his friends amongst the artists. They were shabbily dressed, cultivated vile manners, were gloriously illiterate, but they had originality of feeling and thought. Without book-knowledge they had the knack of seizing the essence of life and of settling problems with intuitive accuracy. Strindberg still found solace of mind in painting. It was like singing. The brush and the colours gave shape to his vague imaginings. The post-romanticism of Corot pervaded his circle of friends. The idea that one should paint one's own soul, not stocks and stones, captivated him. The only value of the impression lay in its fusion with individuality. One should therefore paint from memory, with fantasy. He always painted the sea with its shore in the foreground, and angry-looking firs, some naked cliffs further out, a white light-house and sea-marks. The sky was usually clouded, but at the horizon the clouds broke, and light was let through. He painted sunrise and moonshine, but never clear daylight. His friends wore long hair, slouch-hats, brightly coloured neckties, and lived like the birds. They dreamt of canvas so large and subjects so great that no studio could contain them. A sculptor had made arrangements with a Norwegian to hew the legendary giant out of the Dovre mountain, a painter was going to reproduce the sea--nothing but the sea--with a horizon so vast that the globular shape of the earth should be made visible. With two friends of the new life Strindberg talked out his melancholy questionings, and sketched the future of regenerated humanity. One was a painter of thirty who had been an agricultural labourer, and who, after some years' training, had found art an inadequate vehicle for thought, and who now "lived on nothing" but the stimulus of his eclectic philosophy. The friend's name was "Måns," and he had a remarkable faculty for discovering faulty premises in the fabric of August's _dichtung_. The other friend possessed the steadiness of the well-established social unit, and contributed a dispassionate and polite scepticism to the review of ideas. They introduced Strindberg to Buckle's theories. There he found support for his rebellion against the scholasticism of Upsala, and learnt that his disease of doubt was in reality the basis of health. Doubt and discontent were the pre-requisites of knowledge and progress--the sole paths towards true happiness. He felt irritated with all that was old and antiquated. Newspapers worked for the hour only, with no thought for the future. He could not read them without spasms of impatience.